Looking Forward

I think what this week’s readings speak to, as well as Professor Tadiar’s lecture is the façade of the universal benefits of free market capitalism and globalization. Ehrenreich’s piece speaks to the inequalities of feminism and the hierarchy and exploitation by women towards other women. According to Ehrenreich there is no longer any “purity in our consumption,” for even if we do shed the hierarchy of domestic help and clean our own houses we are still buying products that have been produced at the physical expense of someone else(69). This type of exploitation is simply masked by distance. As Ehrenreich affirms, “sooner or later, someone else will have to finish the job (70).

A proposed solution, and this is where I think all of this week’s readings fall short: Moving beyond simply making our lives “visible again" as Ehrenreich suggests as I think that’s somewhat euphemistic. I think what’s really needed is to get back to the basics and simplify our life styles. Like Ehrenreich says “our houses are unmanageable” but beyond that our entire way of being is too large to sustain” (68). Local food, local retailers, truly “fair” global sustainable products, and an active educational and progressive component required of all industry must be implemented. In terms of this notion of hierarchy of women, is it perhaps women that should on the forefront of this change? In other words, from where should this change begin?

But my lingering question is this: in several other classes the notion of population control always comes up. Considering a revised model of simplifying our lifestyles, cutting down on our consumption of resources, negating the wasteful materialistic components of capitalism, even then would there still be enough resources to go around? Should there be population control everywhere to ensure that pragmatically and naturally speaking, everyone will have access to the resources? At what point are we simply overgrown or is this a constructed concept to avoid dealing with the particulars of the currently flawed reality in which we exist? And even if we fashioned a world where all resources were available and plentiful, what would that world look like? This vision, though idealistic and far from being immediately attainable is still worth crafting. I would challenge us to think about that as well.